Theatre Students Audition for Summer Work over Spring Break
Over spring break, Viterbo Theatre and Music Theatre students auditioned for summer theatre jobs, taking the skills they learned in the classroom into the “real world”. Roughly twenty Viterbo students spent last weekend at the Twin Cities Unified Theatre Auditions (TCUTA) in St. Paul, Minnesota. Thirteen theatre companies attended in hopes of finding actors to cast in their summer productions.
For Kara Schultz, a senior Music Theatre major, this was one of the last auditions to attend before graduation. Last semester, Schultz took a class centered around auditioning with her fellow seniors at Viterbo. The class seeks to help students to give professional auditions that will best show off their talents and skills.
“It can be intimidating, having only two minutes to show you are a great candidate for the companies,” says Shultz, “but going to class to practice exactly what we do in an audition takes the guessing away. I felt prepared and confident on Saturday.”
The TCUTA audition process involved sending in a headshot and resume many weeks beforehand to be evaluated by staff. Once the screening process was over, the performers were given a time and told which day they would be auditioning. People auditioning were given two minutes total to either perform two monologues or one song and one monologue. “They were running a bit ahead of schedule, but we all arrived early,” explains Shultz, “We were shepherded back stage by the stage manager and performed our audition packages one at a time. When we were done, we followed the yellow tape back to the lobby where everyone was waiting.”
In addition to performing opportunities, companies were also looking for actors interested in running workshops and camps for children interested in theatre. Companies such as Prairie Fire Children’s Theatre and Missoula Children’s Theatre were seeking to hire people willing to travel around the country and teach a new group of children each week. Sophomore Acting major, Jared Miller, was called back to interview with the Missoula Children’s Theatre. “It was something I was interested in even before I went to TCUTA. Traveling around the Midwest, teaching kids about theatre and putting on a show with them just sounds like a really fun opportunity. I was excited to get called back.”
Current Viterbo students were also joined by alumni, who were at TCUTA both auditioning and helping their current workplaces find talent. Student Austin Sargent works for CLIMB theatre, an educational children’s theatre company in the Twin Cities. Sargent was at TCUTA helping the callbacks for CLIMB run smoothly, as well as catching up with old friends from Viterbo. “It was great to see Austin again! It was nice to see a recent Viterbo alum working for a professional company that we were actually auditioning for. It makes me excited for the future.”